Commercial and industrial laundering facilities or processing clothing such as employee uniforms have become increasingly sophisticated in order to meet customer demand efficiently and economically. Laundering is only one aspect of the service provided by commercial and industrial laundries. After laundering, a garment such as a pair of pants must be dried, visually and manually inspected and hangered. The hangered pants are then transferred to a machine for removing the wrinkles and from there to devices for sorting the pants so that they are delivered to the proper customer.
The speed at which garments such as pants can be processed in commercial laundering facilities is dependent in part upon the time required to inspect the pants for defects and then to hanger the pants in preparation for further processing. In the past, both the inspection and hangering operations have been done manually. The inspection operation requires a worker to not only visually observe the back and front of the pants, but also to touch the pants to detect any defects which might be missed by a visual inspection. After such inspections, it has been customary to lay the pants down on a table or the like and fold them along their creases. The pants are manually placed on a hanger and then the hanger is hooked on a rack or bar for transport to the next station.
One problem with the method of inspecting pants described above is that the worker has to perform the visual and touch inspection operations separately, and this increases the time required to completely inspect a pair of pants. In order to visually inspect the front and back of the pants, the worker must hold them up with his or her hands and then turn them from front to back so that the zipper, pockets, seat, legs and other areas of the pants can be fully viewed. After this visual inspection, the worker can then lay the pants down on a table or the like to conduct the touch inspection before the pant legs are stretched out and folded along their creases for hangering. This two-stage inspection procedure for inspecting pants is relatively time-consuming, but must be conducted in order to achieve the goal of zero defects in pants processed by commercial laundries.
The hangering procedure described above is also time-consuming and reduces the volume of pants which can be handled by any given worker. The three-step operation of picking up a hanger, folding the pants on the hanger and then placing the hangered pants on a rack, bar or other take-away device is labor intensive and relatively time consuming.